The Island of the Day Before (35 page)

Finally, some Spaniards had objected that satellites in eclipse did not appear during the day, nor on stormy nights. "Perhaps these complainers believe that a man claps his hands and there, illico et immediate, lunar eclipses are at his disposal?" Father Caspar was irritated. Who ever said that observations had to be made at every instant? Anyone who has voyaged from one Indies to the other knows that taking the longitude cannot require a greater frequency than what is required for observing the latitude, and this, too, whether with astrolabe or Jacob's cross, cannot be done in moments of great tumult of the sea. To measure it properly, this longitude, even only once every two or three days suffices; then, between one observation and the next it is possible to keep account of the time and the space covered, as was done in the past, using the astrolabe. But until now that was all they could use for months and months. "They seem to me," the good father said, more indignant than ever, "like Huomo that in gross famine you assist with a basket of bread, and instead of saying gratia he is disturbed that also a roasted schweine or a fat rabbit you do not put on the table for him. Oh, Holy Wood! Would you perhaps throw into the sea the cannons of this ship only because, ninety times out of a hundred, the balls fall plop into the aqua?"

So then Father Caspar engaged Roberto in the preparation of an experiment that was to be performed on an evening like the one now ahead of them, astronomically opportune, with clear sky and with the sea in slight motion. If the experiment were done on an evening of calm, Father Caspar explained, it would be like doing it on land, and there—as was already known—it was bound to succeed. The experiment had to provide the observer with the semblance of calm on a hull moving from stern to prow and from side to side.

First of all they had to recover, from among the clocks so maltreated over the past few days, one still in proper working order. Only one, in this fortunate case, and not two: they would set it to the local hour after taking good diurnal bearings (which they did) and, as they were certain of being on the antipodal meridian, there was no reason to have another clock telling the time of the Isla de Hierro. It was enough to know that the difference was exactly twelve hours. Midnight here; noon there.

On sober reflection, however, this decision seems based on a vicious circle. Their position on the antipodal meridian was something the experiment was to prove, not something to take as a given. But Father Caspar was so sure of his previous observations that he desired only to confirm them, and then—probably—after all the confusion on the ship there was no longer a single clock that still told the time at the other side of the globe, and they had to overcome that obstacle. Actually, Roberto was not so punctilious as to point out the flaw in this argument.

"When I say
go,
you look at the hour and write. And immediately strike the perpendiculum."

The perpendiculum was supported by a little metal armature which acted as a gallows for a copper wand ending in a circular pendulum. At the lowest point of the pendulum's course there was a horizontal wheel in which teeth were set, but shaped so that one side of the tooth was square and jutted above the level of the wheel, and the other oblique. Alternately moving in this direction and that, the pendulum struck with a protruding spike, a bristle, which in turn touched a tooth on its jutted side and moved the wheel; but when the pendulum returned, the little bristle just grazed the oblique side of the tooth, and the wheel remained still. If the teeth were numbered, it was possible, when the pendulum stopped, to count the number of teeth shifted, and thus calculate the number of particles of time that had passed.

"So you are not obliged to count every time one, two, three, et cetera, but in the end when I say
sufficit,
you stop the perpendiculum and count the teeth, verstanden? And write how many teeth. Then you look at the horologium and write this or that hora. And when I again say
go,
you a very strong push give it, and it begins again its oscillatio. Simple, even a parvulus can do."

To be sure, this was not a great perpendiculum, as Father Caspar well knew, but debate on that mechanism was just beginning, and only at some future time would it be possible to construct perfected ones.

"Very difficult, and we must yet much learn, but if God did not forbid die Wette—how do you say?—the pari..."

"Betting."

"Ah. If God did not forbid, I would bet that in the future all will go to seek longitudes and all other phenomena with the perpendiculum. But is very difficult on a ship, and you must make gross attention."

Caspar told Roberto to arrange the devices, together with writing materials, on the quarterdeck, which was the highest observation point on the
Daphne:
there they would set up the Instrumentum Arcetricum. From the soda they had carried up the instruments Roberto had glimpsed while he was still pursuing the Intruder. These were easily transported, except for the metal basin, which the two men hoisted up on the deck with curses and ruinous failures, for it would not pass through the hatches. But Father Caspar, wiry as he was, now that he saw the imminent realization of his plan, revealed a physical energy equal to his will.

Almost alone, with an implement of his that tightened bolts, he mounted the armature of semicircles and little bars of iron, which turned out to be a round frame, and to this a circular canvas was fixed with some rings, so that in the end they had a kind of great basin in the form of half a spherical orb with a diameter of about two meters. It was necessary to tar it so it would retain the malodorous oil with which Roberto filled it, emptying keg after keg, complaining of the stench. Father Caspar reminded him, seraphic as a Capuchin, that they were not using the oil to fry onions.

"What is the use of it, then?"

"On this little sea we try an even more little vessel to put," he said, and made Roberto help him place in the great canvas basin a metallic pan, almost flat, with a diameter only slightly less than that of its container. "You never heard say the sea smooth like oil? There, look, the deck tilts left and oil of the big basin tilts right, and vice versa, or, rather, so to you it seems; truly the oil in equilibrium stays, never up or down, and to the horizon parallel. It would happen also with water, but on oil the pan floats like on a calm sea. And I have already in Rome a little experiment done, with two little bowls, the bigger full of water and the little of sand, and in the sand I stuck a stylus, and I set the little afloat in the big, and I moved the big, and you could see the stylus erect like campanile, not bent like the towers of Bolonia!"

"Wunderbar!" xenoglot Roberto cried approvingly. "And now?"

"Hora we take the pan, where we must in it a whole machine put."

The bottom of the metal pan had some little springs on the outside so that, the Jesuit explained, once it was afloat with its cargo in the larger tub, it would remain separated by at least one finger from the bottom of the container; and if the excessive movement of its guest drove it too far down (What guest? Roberto asked; Now you will see, Caspar replied), those springs should cause it to rise to the surface again without shocks. To the inner pan they affixed a seat with a sloping back, which allowed a man to sit or, rather, recline, looking up, his feet on an iron bar that acted as a counterweight.

Having set up the basin on the deck, and having made it stable with some wedges, Father Caspar sat on the seat and explained to Roberto how to place on his back and fasten to his waist a harness of straps and bandoleers of canvas and leather, to which also a helmet with a vizor should be tied. The vizor had a hole for one eye, while at the level of the nose a rod protruded, surmounted by a small hoop. Through the hoop was inserted the spyglass, from which a little staff hung, ending in a hook. The Hyperbole of the Eyes could be moved freely until a given star was identified; but, once the star was in the center of the lens, the rigid staff was fixed to the pectoral bandoleers, and after that a steady view was assured, fixed against any possible movements of that Cyclops.

"Perfecto!" the Jesuit rejoiced. When the pan was set afloat on the becalmed oil, even the most elusive celestial bodies could be studied and no commotion of the sea in tumult could cause the horoscopant eye to be deflected from the chosen star. "This your Signor Galilei described, and I have made!"

"Very beautiful," Roberto said, "but who will put all this in the tub of oil?"

"Now I untie myself and get down, then we put the empty pan in the oil, then I climb on again."

"I cannot believe that will be easy."

"Much more easier than moving the pan with me in it seated."

Though with some effort, the pan with its chair was hoisted up and set afloat on the oil. Then Father Caspar, in helmet and harness, and the spyglass mounted on the vizor, tried to climb onto the scaffolding while Roberto held him, one hand clutching his hand and the other pushing his bottom. The attempt was repeated several times, but with no success.

It was not that the metal frame supporting the larger tub could not support also an occupant, but it denied him reasonable footholds. And if Father Caspar tried, as he did many times, to set only one foot on the rim, immediately placing the other inside the minor circle, this latter, in the disturbance of the embarkation, tended to glide over the oil towards the opposite side of the basin, making the priest's legs part like a compass as he emitted cries of alarm until Roberto seized him by the waist and drew him closer, that is to say onto the relative terra firma of the
Daphne
—cursing meanwhile the memory of Galilei and extolling his persecutors and killers. At that point Father Caspar sank into the arms of his savior, assuring him with a groan that those persecutors were not killers but most worthy men of the Church, bent only on the preservation of the truth, and that with Galilei they had been paternal and merciful. Then, still cuirassed and immobilized, his gaze towards the sky and the spyglass perpendicular to his face, like a Pulcinella with a mechanical nose, he reminded Roberto that Galilei, at least with this invention, had not erred, and it was just a matter of trying and trying again. "Und so mein lieber Robertus," he then said, "perhaps you have me forgotten and believe me a tortoise, captured with belly oben? Come, push me again, there, help me touch that rim, there now, for man is proper the statura erecta."

Through these several unhappy operations the oil did not remain smooth as oil, and after a while both experimenters found themselves oleate and, what was worse, oleabund—if the context allows the chronicler this coinage without imputation of the source.

When Father Caspar had begun to despair of ever occupying that seat, Roberto observed that perhaps it was necessary first to empty the container of oil, then install the pan, then have the priest climb onto it, and finally pour in the oil again, which, as its level rose, would raise also the pan and, with it, the observer, all floating together.

So it was done, amid praise from the master lavished on his acute pupil, as midnight was approaching. Not that the apparatus gave a great impression of stability, but if Father Caspar took care not to move unduly, they could hope.

At a certain moment Father Caspar triumphed: "I see them!" The cry caused him to move his nose, and the glass, rather heavy, began to slip out of the circle: he moved his arm to arrest it, the movement of the arm jerked his shoulder, and the pan was on the point of capsizing. Roberto abandoned paper and clocks, supported Caspar, re-established the equilibrium of the whole and bade the astronomer remain motionless, allowing only his eyepiece to make very prudent shifts, and above all without expressing emotions.

The next announcement was made in a whisper which, magnified by the great vizor, seemed to resound as hoarse as a Tartar trumpet: "I see them again," and with a measured gesture he fixed the spyglass to the pectoral. "Oh, wunderbar! Three little stars east of Jupiter, one alone west ... The closest seems smallest and is ... wait ... yes, at zero minutes and thirty seconds from Jupiter. Write. Now it is about to touch Jupiter, soon it will disappear. Careful and write exactly the time it disappears...."

Roberto, who had left his place to assist his master, again picked up the tablet on which he was to mark the times, but sitting, he had the clocks behind him. He turned abruptly, knocking over the pendulum. The wand slipped from its notch. Roberto seized it and tried to replace it, but he failed. Father Caspar was already shouting orders to note the time, Roberto turned towards the clock and, in moving, he struck the inkwell with his pen. Not thinking, he set the well upright, to save some of the liquid, but he knocked over the clock. "Did you take the hour? Go! The perpendiculum!" Caspar was shouting, and Roberto replied, "I cannot, I cannot!"

"How can you not, dumbhead?" And hearing no reply, he kept on shouting, "How can you not, foolish? Have you written, have you made note, did you push? It is disappearing. Go!"

"I have lost, no, not lost, I have broken everything," Roberto said.

Father Caspar moved the spyglass away from the vizor, peered sideways, saw the pendulum in pieces, the clock overturned, Roberto's hands stained with ink. Beside himself, he exploded with a "Himmelpotzblitzherrgottsakrament!" that shook his whole body. In that unfortunate movement, he caused the pan to tilt too far, and he slid into the oil of the basin, the spyglass slipping from his hand and his hauberk; then, as the ship pitched, the glass rolled across the quarterdeck, bounced down the ladder, and struck the main deck before it was flung against the breech of a cannon.

Roberto did not know whether to succor first the man or the instrument. The man, flailing in that rancidity, shouted magnanimously to save the spyglass, Roberto rushed down to the elusive Hyperbole, and found it, dented, both lenses broken.

When Roberto finally removed Father Caspar from the oil, the Jesuit, who looked like a piglet ready for the oven, simply said with heroic stubbornness that not all was lost. There was another telescope, equally powerful, mounted on the Specula Melitensis. They had only to go and fetch it from the Island.